Earlier this year as I walked into one of the local funeral homes, the receptionist looked at me quizzically for a moment before standing up to speak. She said, “I’ve been wanting to thank you for officiating at ___’s funeral.” It took me a few minutes to connect the dots since that particular service had been at the church and had not been overseen by this particular funeral home. But during the course of the conversation, I learned that the deceased of whom we spoke had been one of her neighbors and a mentor during the craziness of working motherhood. In the months since that conversation, we have developed a friendship that would never have begun if not for the death of a mutual friend.
One of the great challenges we face as Christians is the death of someone we love. We grieve when we no longer have that person in our life. We mourn the fact that the myriad ways in which that person touched our lives begin to transition into the past tense. Even as we experience those sensations of pain and loss, we also celebrate that through the grace of God we are a resurrection people and believe that death is not the end. These words that God gave to Ezekiel to share with the Children of Israel as they found themselves in exile are some of the first ones from scripture that point to the power of the resurrection. They are among the words I try to keep written upon the sinews of my soul.
The Lord shall open our graves and bring us up from them. God will put His Spirit in us, and we will live. When we read these words, they become personal if we change them from the generic second-person pronouns (“you, yours”) to the first-person pronouns (“I, me, mine; we, us, ours”). This event is not one that will just happen to others but to all of us. In the midst of those moments when we struggle to understand and cope with the death of someone we love, God provides these words of reassurance that His promise is for us all.